Noida: Noida International Airport (NIA), which turns a month old on Wednesday, has been off to a slow start with airlines already pulling out routes that didn’t find adequate takers.Distance and affordability of travelling to and from the new airport have proven to be a killjoy because flyers have the option of the better-connected IGI airport. The cab-dependent NIA is around 65km from Noida Sector 18.As a result, the gem of Jewar has witnessed a slow ramp-up of flights and footfall. Till the place starts buzzing with more planes and people, passenger concerns about travelling to or from Jewar early morning and in evening hours also remain on the rather desolate (due to lack of traffic) stretches of Yamuna Expressway after crossing Pari Chowk.The impact of one of the three launch airlines – Air India Express – pulling out due to mounting losses of parent Air India has been clear. The first week of NIA operations saw 86 flights and a small network of five connected cities. By week four, that rose to 224 flights and 15 cities. On Day 1, the airport handled 1,427 passengers, a number that rose to 2,797 this Monday at NIA, whose current capacity is the same as IGIA’s Terminal 2.Of the total passenger footfall between June 15 and July 13, 18,424 were departures, 18,089 were arrivals, 11,732 were transfer passengers and 13,042 were in-transit passengers. Nearly 40% of the overall traffic was connecting travellers.Akasa had started flights to Bengaluru and Navi Mumbai from June 16. Both these sectors have been suspended temporarily. Akasa is now trying its luck with a twice daily NIA-Mumbai CSMIA flight instead.For many years, India’s largest airline, IndiGo, had been asking Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) to earmark IGIA’s Terminal 1 exclusively for its domestic and international flights. While that didn’t happen, IndiGo now virtually has an entire airport in the NCR for itself in NIA. The airline has 105 weekly flights to and from 15 cities, which include twice daily to Lucknow and Jaipur. It has so far withdrawn only the Noida-Chandigarh service for poor footfall.Aware of the need for catalysts, Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) has been working to improve both connectivity and lighting along Yamuna Expressway to enhance safety. YEIDA CEO R K Singh said National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is constructing an interchange connecting Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE) with Yamuna Expressway near Dankaur. “The interchange is expected to open on Aug 15, making travel to Noida airport easier for people from Ghaziabad, Hapur, Bulandshahr and nearby districts,” he said.Authorities remain upbeat about traffic picking up. “About 13-14 outbound flights and an equal number of inbound flights operate daily from Noida airport. The average daily passenger traffic is around 2,500-2,600 and these numbers are expected to grow,” Singh added.The going was never going to be easy for NIA because it’s the first time in India that a second international airport has opened in an urban conglomerate where the first one is yet to reach full operating capacity. The new airports in Hyderabad and Bengaluru are almost as far as NIA is for Delhiites, but travellers don’t have any option because those became the only airports after the older ones were shut. Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad, however, have in IGIA an option that’s way better connected and has affordable multi-modal transport options.Navi Mumbai International Airport, which started as Mumbai’s second aviation hub barely six months before NIA became operational is flying a different trajectory because it does not compete with Mumbai CSMIA, which is saturated. Airlines looking to expand simply had to go to Navi Mumbai when it started operations with domestic flights last Christmas. It has seen over 23 lakh passengers since, is connected to 46 domestic destinations and currently handles about 150 flights daily. It will start international flights from Wednesday. While NIA started operations with a 1.2 crore passengers per annum (CPA) terminal, NMIA started with a 2 CPA terminal.NIA may have a tough time till 2030 when IGIA saturates by reaching its peak capacity of about 13-14 CPA. IGIA currently has a capacity of 11 CPA but saw less than 8 crore passengers last year. It handles about 1,300 flights daily.A factor beyond NIA’s control is that it opened at a time when Indian carriers are reeling under the triple whammy of lucrative western routes having become unviable for them due to the closure of Pakistani airspace since last April, the US-Iran war sending oil prices flaring and the rupee weakening. Airlines have, therefore, been scaling back on routes.“Noida Airport has set sail amid the perfect storm. The first few years are going to be tough, but the long-term prospects are sound. It is surviving the tough initial phase whose length will be decided by macro-economic factors,” said a senior airline official.In fact, leading private sector airport players in India are already eyeing a stake in NIA should concessionaire Zurich Airports decide to offload some. This is what Zurich Airports had done in Bengaluru, too. It had exited Kempegowda International Airport in March 2017 when it finalised the sale of its remaining 5% minority stake to Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd.
